Josie Griffin is Not a Vampire by Heather Swain YP FIC SWAIN

Josie Griffin isn't sorry. Her scumbag ex-boyfriend totally deserved to have his windshield bashed in (he's just lucky it wasn't his cheating-on-her-with-her-best-friend-face!). Now she has to have mandatory community service AND anger management classes.  Like being angry at all her back stabbing ex-friends isn't normal?  Besides her group is about as far from normal you can get.  Avis thinks he's a were-something-or-other, Johan vants to suck her blooood, Tarren believes she has magic powers, and Helios thinks he's a Greek god (at least he looks it-swoon).  It isn't long before the crazy starts rubbing off on Josie and she starts wondering if maybe they aren't crazy and she's just joined a Supernatural Support Group. And worse yet Josie is about to find out that some creatures of the night are darker than others and one out there is preying on defenseless girls.

This is a fun and silly trifle that could be some great beach reading.  Josie has a seriously tart tongue and attitude to spare, but it never gets to be whiny or annoying.  Swain's look at the paranormal world that lives just under our nose isn't terribly original, but her witty take and flair for clever (if woefully dated. i mean do Kids These Days really know The Lost Boys?) pop culture references make the book very fun reading.  As much as I liked Heather and her Nancy Drew with bite attempt to solve mysteries, save the day, and get to the truth I'd say most the books supporting characters are a little flat.  The support group provides lots of humor but no real depth. Also, the central mystery isn't very hard to solve and the books eventual Big Bad doesn't have much of a character or menace.  You'd think that would make this a bad review, but for some reason I read this book in a single go.  It was just that perfect mix of humor and frothy fun with the perfect length.

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The Diviners by Libba Bray YP FIC BRAY

Evie O’Neill has managed to get herself kicked out of town for her latest in a series of drunken shenanigans (and during Prohibition no less!), but fortunately for her she’s been exiled to live with her uncle in New York City!  There she tries to hide a secret from her occult obsessed uncle, she has a mysterious power to read memories from objects, but she’ll need her power because a diabolical serial killer is stalking the streets and she may be the only one who can stop him.  

So the summary above doesn’t mention that Evie also makes many very odd friends that have their own troubles and even tell the story from their perspective.  This can get a bit unwieldy at parts because the book will eb going multiple directions at one, however it is all for the good as Bray’s excellent writing make all the supporting characters an integral part of the story.  Evie herself is wonderfully brash and at times downright unlikeable, which I like in a heroine!  I mean, who says and does the right thing all the time?  I like my protagonists to be occasionally annoying as well as witty, brave, and original.  Evie is all these and more!  The cast of supporting characters is really wonderful and the book feels like a true ensemble.  Best of all might be the wonderful amount of period detail that Bray brings out.  Loads of authors are trying to makes the 20s be the new hot spot for historical YA, but I think bray may be top of the heap for quite a while.  She makes New York come alive so that the setting is a hugely important part of the story.  She kills it with the murder mystery angle as well.  The murder chapters where the killer stalks are so wonderfully creepy! The book has enough mysteries, secrets, action, suspense, and o be read for the sparking plot alone, so it’s really wonderful that it also has top notch characters, prose, dialogue, and pacing!   

So with all this greatness, there simply must be SOMETHING for me to complain about!  Well, it is rather long (just under 500 pages!), but when a book is so good and so filled with so much character and so many ideas you don’t really want it to end.  Even better!  This is the first in a new series!  Even better than even better!  This story is self-contained and doesn’t make you wait months or years to find out how the first story ends!  The Diviners is definitely a must read for fans of historical fiction, mysteries, supernatural, and heck anybody that likes a good book.

You can check our catalog for The Diviners here.

Maoh: Juvenile Remix by Megumi Osuga YP FIC OSUGA

Ando blends in.  He learned at a very young age the Japanese idiom “the hammer that sticks up, gets nailed down first,” was true.  Thus, he relies on his not popular/not unpopular enough for daily beatings status and tries to always have the same exact views and interests as his friends.  Everything changes when the Grasshoppers show up.  A group of young vigilantes pledged to saving the city led by a charismatic leader named Inukai, the Grasshoppers have a dark side that scares Ando.  This fear and admiration lead Ando to start standing up for himself and others and using his long secret gift: the power to make others say whatever he is thinking.  Unfortunately, his new found resolve and long hidden power also put him directly in the sight of the Grasshoppers and in the line of fire!

This is an exciting new series.  It has very dynamic and exciting art (however some of the female designs are gratuitously fan service to a degree that birders on self-parody) and I quite like the character design.  The art is nicely detailed and it feels like a premium title.  The story has a very Deathnote feel, special powers, mysterious deaths, teen violence just under the surface of a normal city, etc., but that’s not a bad thing.  This manga may not be the most unique I’ve read, but it moves fast, has excellent art, and has a truly intriguing mystery. The main character is a very believable coward.  I certainly wouldn’t want to get brutally beaten for sticking up for fellow classmates and I DEFINITELY wouldn’t tell my high school chums that I have Special Secret Powers!  It was one of the better examples of reluctant hero that I’ve seen in manga in a while and I hope the series can keep up the realistic character growth, because it really helps ground the more fantastic elements.  Check it out otaku, it might become your new favorite series!

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor YP FIC OKORAFOR

Sunny was born and raised in New York, but lives in Nigeria.  They call her “Akata,” an insulting term for Americans.  The fact that she is an albino makes her even more of an outsider.  When she sees a vision of Armageddon in the flame of a candle she knows she is truly different.  Soon she finds friends that are different too and discovers she is part of a secret world.  The good news is that she has magic powers, the bad news is she’ll need them to hunt down a black-hatted child killer, creatively named Black Hat.

This is my kind of fantasy.  Set firmly in the real world, with characters you believe in, Akata Witch makes you believe in magic.  Okorafor lets you really get to know Sunny and explores her life in Nigeria before the magic really starts moving the plot forward.  This means, that the book has a slow start, but I really didn’t mind.  It also has a super fast ending, but I was able to forgive some plotting problems because so much about the book is really good. It was as interesting to me to see life in modern Nigeria as it was to learn about a secret group of magic users. That’s what makes this book pretty special, you care about the world beyond just the cool powers AND the cool powers are really super cool! It’s also has a super evil and genuinely menacing villain. I’m always looking for paranormal that isn’t so normal and Akata Witch is way better than normal. 

Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler YP FIC KESSLER

 “The day Melissa Miller killed her cat, she met the Angel of Death.  Except he was no angel-and he wasn’t there for the cat.”

Melissa “Missy” Miller cuts herself to drown out the other pain.  The pain of loneliness, sadness, and humiliation are way worse than the pain of her blade.  But when she cuts too deep and meets Death he has a job for her: War.  She takes her blade and uses it for a sword, able to take her rage and ignite in others.  Will she be able to keep from turning the sword on herself?

This is the sequel to Kessler’s Hunger, which takes an anorexic and makes her into Famine.  That was a very good book, but I liked Rage even better.  It takes a realistic look at self harm and depression and twists things by adding a supernatural element.  This works because Kessler keeps us invested in Missy’s pain and believe her transformation into War.  This is an unflinching and tough read.  Missy goes through enormous pain and the scenes of cutting are detailed and possibly triggering for someone that actually has issues with self harm.  However, for people interested in knowing more about cutting and want something very different this is a unique and satisfying winner.  For more books about self-harm try Scars by C.A. Rainfield (YP FIC RAINFIEL) or Cut by Patricia McCormick (YP FIC MCCORMIC).  

For non-fiction you can check out:

Inside a cutter's mind : understanding and helping those who self-injure 616.8582 CLARK

Cutting : understanding and overcoming self-mutilation616.8582 LEVENKRO

Helping teens who cut : understanding and ending self-injury 618.928582 HOLLANDE

Or go to : http://ulifeline.org/main/page/224/Cutting?gclid=COahk5CzxasCFUXs7QodOwFe8w

1 800 273-TALK (8255)